Themes

Overview¶

Posting 3 comes with 37 built-in themes, and can load themes you make yourself, including the themes you made for Posting 2.

Choosing a theme¶

Press Ctrl+P and choose Theme… to see every theme. As you move through the list, Posting previews each one, so you can see how it looks before you choose it. Press Enter to use the highlighted theme, or Esc to go back to the theme you had.

The theme picker. Change the theme of these docs with the picker at the top of the page to see a few of them.

A theme chosen in the palette lasts until you quit. To keep it, set it in your configuration file:

theme: lantern

or with the POSTING_THEME environment variable.

If moving through the list feels slow in your terminal, turn off the live preview with command_palette.theme_preview: false.

Built-in themes¶

Dark
`galaxy` (default)	`abyss`	`amber`	`amethyst`
`aurora`	`bonsai`	`catppuccin`	`cyberdeck`
`dracula`	`dwarven`	`garnet`	`gruvbox`
`hearthstone`	`kanagawa`	`kintsugi`	`lantern`
`midnight-ember`	`monokai`	`moonstone`	`neon-reef`
`nord`	`obsidian-tide`	`phosphor`	`rose-pine`
`solarized`	`tokyo-night`	`understory`	`velvet`

Light
`catppuccin-latte`	`dracula-light`	`gruvbox-light`	`kanagawa-lotus`
`monokai-light`	`nord-light`	`rose-pine-dawn`	`solarized-light`
`tokyo-night-day`

Posting 2 theme names¶

Some of Posting 2's theme names are mapped to their closest Posting 3 theme, so an old config keeps working:

Posting 2	Posting 3
`posting`, `textual-dark`	`galaxy`
`catppuccin-mocha`, `catppuccin-macchiato`, `catppuccin-frappe`	`catppuccin`
`textual-light`	`catppuccin-latte`

Posting 2 themes that Posting 3 doesn't have, such as nebula, cobalt or synthwave, fall back to galaxy, and Posting lets you know when it starts.

Creating a theme¶

Run posting locate themes to find where Posting looks for your themes:

$ posting locate themes
Themes directory:
/home/you/.local/share/posting/themes

Each theme is a YAML file in that directory, ending in .yaml or .yml. Here's an example:

name: harbour           # the name you use in your config and see in the picker
dark: true              # false for a light theme
primary: '#4e78c4'      # the main colour: GET labels, JSON keys, dialog borders
secondary: '#f39c12'    # a second colour, used for smaller highlights
accent: '#e74c3c'       # a third colour, used to show what has focus
background: '#0e1726'   # the screen's background
surface: '#17202a'      # inputs, text areas and tables
panel: '#1f2b38'        # raised surfaces, a step above `surface`
text: '#e6edf3'         # the main text colour
success: '#2ecc71'      # successful responses, variables that have a value
warning: '#f1c40f'      # redirects, unsaved changes
error: '#e74c3c'        # errors, variables that have no value

Only name and primary are required. Colours must be hex values (#rgb, #rrggbb or #rrggbbaa). Any colour you leave out is taken from a built-in theme (galaxy for dark themes and catppuccin-latte for light ones), so you can start with just a couple of colours and add more as you go. The file's name doesn't matter: the theme is known by its name, and a theme with the same name as a built-in theme replaces it.

Themes are loaded when Posting starts, so restart Posting to see changes to a theme file. If a theme file has a problem, Posting names the file and the problem in a notification when it starts.

Your themes are listed first in the theme picker, under Yours. To list only your own themes, set load_builtin_themes: false. To ignore the themes directory, set load_user_themes: false. To keep your themes somewhere else, set theme_directory.

Themes from Posting 2¶

Posting 3 reads Posting 2 theme files, as long as their colours are hex values: a theme that uses colour names or rgb(…) needs its colours changed to hex first. The colours listed above are used, and other settings in the file are ignored, including author, description and homepage, and the custom styles under text_area, syntax, url, method and variable. Syntax highlighting and method colours come from the theme's colours instead (see below).

Colours in the UI¶

Syntax highlighting, the URL bar and the method labels all use the theme's colours, so every theme gets a consistent set of colours without any extra configuration:

Element	Colour
`GET`	Primary
`POST`	Success
`PUT`	Warning
`PATCH`	Info
`DELETE`	Error
`HEAD`, `OPTIONS`	Muted text
JSON keys, XML and HTML tags	Primary
Strings	Success
Numbers	Warning
`true`, `false`, `null`	Accent
A variable with a value	Success
A variable with no value	Error, underlined
URL scheme / host	Accent / Secondary

Icons¶

Posting can draw icons in the sidebar tabs, the header and notifications using a Nerd Font. Icons are on by default in terminals that come with Nerd Font symbols built in (currently Ghostty), and off elsewhere, since they show up as boxes without one. If you use a Nerd Font, turn them on with:

nerd_fonts: true